ive the ceremony of some of its charms.

There was awed silence for a time. It was a pretty scene. In the middle
of the room a wooden table; upon it the small green fir, covered with
little twinkling tapers; the orthodox waxen angels, and strings of balls
and bonbons hanging about--the white _Christ-kind_ at the top in the
arms of Father Christmas. The three men standing in a semi-circle at one
side; how well I could see them! A suppressed smile upon Eugen's face,
such as it always wore when pleasing other people. Friedhelm not
allowing the smile to fully appear upon his countenance, but with a
grave delight upon his face, and with great satisfaction beaming from
his luminous brown eyes. Karl with his hands in his pockets, and an
attitude by which I knew he said, "There! what do you think of that?"
Frau Schmidt and the two children on the other side.

The tree was not a big one. The wax-lights were probably cheap ones; the
gifts that hung upon the boughs or lay on the table must have been
measured by the available funds of three poor musicians. But the whole
affair did its mission admirably--even more effectively than an official
commission to (let us say) inquire into the cause of the loss of an
ironclad. It--the tree I mean, not the commission--was intended to
excite joy and delight, and it did excite them to a very high extent. It
was meant to produce astonishment in unsophisticated minds--it did that
too, and here it has a point in common with the proceedings of the
commission respectfully alluded to.

The little girl who was a head taller than Sigmund, had quantities of
flaxen hair plaited in a pigtail and tied with light blue ribbon--new;
and a sweet face which was a softened girl miniature of her brother's.
She jumped for joy, and eyed the tree and the bonbons, and everything
else with irrepressible rapture. Sigmund was not given to effusive
declaration of his emotion, but after gazing long and solemnly at the
show, his eyes turned to his father, and the two smiled in the odd
manner they had, as if at some private understanding existing between
themselves. Then the festivities were considered inaugurated.

Friedhelm Helfen took the rest of the proceedings into his own hands;
and distributed the presents exactly as if he had found them all growing
on the tree, and had not the least idea what they were nor whence they
came. A doll which fell to the share of the little Gretchen was from
Sigmund, as I found from t